Posted By:
Frank WakefieldAs for the Dickey cards, (and I've been looking for an affordable, raw VG one for a while) the one on the left is a reprint.
Look at the one on the left, the green grass has "hatching" or cross marks, which sometimes occurs with reprinting. And even by looking at your images it is easy to see that the card on the left is too thin, when compared to the Dickey on the right which looks real to me.
Goudey cards are printed on a sandwiched cardboard. There are at least 3 layers. My recollection is that somewhere during the run of 239 cards there was a slight change in the "sandwich". And I think I got that out of a truly great article that was in The Old Judge, Mr. Lipset's newsletter of about 15 to 20 years ago. I think the article ran in 3 parts. I'm confident someone on this board would recall that article, or can tell you more about the "sandwich" off of the top of their head. I might try to dig those articles out of my piles of stuff. Don't know where to start digging, though.
The idea of shining light through the card is correct. I think the deal is that no one manufactures raggedy paper like the "sandwich" stuff used years ago. I suspect a super sly crook type could buy really nice Goudey Indian cards, bleach them down, then try to reprint something. But folks in the know could still tell, I'd hope.
As for how to identify a reprint on eBay... ask the guy for a "better" scan and about his return policy. I just returned a Red Ruffing Diamond Star that was trimmed a bit. The fellow accepted the return, for which I was thankful. I halfway hope he gets the card slabbed so some slab-head buys it, oblivious to the trimmed nature of the card. I suspect they slab folks catch most trimmed cards and don't grade them... but I doubt if they catch them all!